A medical group living and working from a 76-foot boat, serving medical needs in remote coastal areas, is using social media to spread the word about
it organization, which is called, appropriately enough, Floating Doctors.

In a Mashablearticle about the organization, Sky LaBrot, executive
director of operations for Floating Doctors, tells of three ways the group uses social media.

Tweeting for aid:
LaBrot provides updates. She says the stories touch followers, who donate to help them do the work they do.

Getting online help with diagnoses:
The group used Twitter, Facebook and a YouTube video to collaborate on recommended orthopedic treatment for a patient with a long-untreated broken
arm.

Creating awareness about diseases:
Social media allows the group to "give impoverished and tropical diseases a face and a personality," including raising awareness of diseases in
remote areas which have been wiped out in much of the world.

Sky LaBrot's brother, Benjamin, was treating patients in Tanzania six years ago, says a CNN article, when he ran out of medical supplies.

"I got back into the car ... having felt like I had just done so little ... and I cried for 20 minutes," he says. "I essentially decided right then and
there that I was going to come back, either to that village or to another one of the hundreds of thousands of villages just like it all over the world
... and I would bring more help. I would bring a bigger backpack."

LaBrot and the Floating Doctors served about 13,000 people in Haiti, Honduras and Panama in the past two years. He says some of the patients the group has served in remote
areas have never before seen a doctor.